This post was interesting to me because I also have a lot of programming experience but other than hunt the wumpus high school I haven’t programmed a game and recently started using AI to help with a new game.

AI has become three things for me:

(1) A learning tool. What it is really great at is understanding my questions when I don’t have the proper terminology. Because of this it can give me a starting point for answers. It is also really fantastic for exposing me to unknown unknowns; probably the most important thing it does for me.

(2) A tool to do boring or tedious things that I can do but slow me down. I’ve found it good enough at a variety of things like commenting code, writing a config file (that I usually edit), or other text-based adventures.

(3) Search. Just like (1), because it understands what I’m actually after, it is irrelevant if I know what a thing is actually called. I also let it filter things for me, make recommendations, etc.

I think you can let it think for you, but… why would you? It’s not as smart as you. It’s just faster and knows more things. It’s like an FPU for the CPU of your brain.